


Mistletoe

by paralleltonone



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:38:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paralleltonone/pseuds/paralleltonone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall just wants to feel the warmth of home, and Louis brings that to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics in the beginning come from Colbie Caillat's ["Mistletoe"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZzW13XxJ4U).

_Great, fake plastic mistletoe_  
 _Wrap me in a great big bow_  
 _And tear me apart_

          It was beautiful outside. The pavement was slick with remnants of the brief and atypical snow that’d fallen over London that morning. Outside the flat’s window, the streets shone bright with glistening hues of red and green, gold and blue. Lights beamed brighter than the stars in shapes of bells, pine trees, and angels. People strolled past one another exchanging smiles in courtesy, dragging along bags filled with surprises they’d present in a week’s time. It was beautiful outside, but it wasn’t home. Not for Niall it wasn’t, and he couldn’t bring himself out there to enjoy any of it.

          He’d brought as much Christmas cheer into the one-bedroom residence as he could, but even the six-footer decked out in tinsels and balls of shimmering silver, and bright white lights didn’t bring the joy he longed for. The boxes covered in colored patterns and bows, and the miniscule train on the coffee table that chugged around an even tinier city with the click of a button didn’t make him any happier. He’d brought as much Christmas cheer into the one-bedroom residence as he could, but it wasn’t home. Not for Niall it wasn’t, and so none of it mattered.

          The guys had gone out, each their separate way around the city, but Niall didn’t move. He didn’t want to go clubbing with Liam. He didn’t want to go to dinner with Harry. He didn’t even want to sit in and watch movies with Zayn. He’d declined every offer for socialization, not feeling in high spirits to enjoy anything. He missed home, and he missed it in a bad way. If Louis were to call, Niall was sure he’d turn him down too. But Louis never called.

          Turning his head in the direction of a knock on the door, Niall knew without a sound and without a glance who was planted on the other side of it. Louis never called because Louis always showed up, and tonight was no different from all the rest. Heaving a sigh, Niall set his guitar aside from its place on his lap and pushed himself up from the arm chair, going to the door. Opening the whitewood, he didn’t give Louis a chance to say anything before he was putting a verbal end to any plans the older man had already thought out for the two of them.

“I’m not going out tonight, Louis,” Niall spoke, “I’m tired.”

“Who says I’m here to take you out?” Louis held up a paper bag in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. “We don’t have to go anywhere, Horan!”

          Pushing past Niall, he made his way into the flat, moving to the kitchen to unpack the bag on the counter, all in true Louis fashion. He didn’t take no for an answer. Not in the past, and not now. Nothing Niall said was going to stop Louis from opening the bag of food and dishing the chicken and sides onto plates. Nothing Niall did was going to make Louis not pop open the tops on the bottles of burning liquid. Louis had made up his mind about how he was spending his night and Niall had no say in this.

“Louis,” he tried.

“I’m here to cheer you up, mate,” Louis said, as if he knew where Niall was going with his words. “And if you want to be anti-social, that’s fine, you can. Just know that I’m not leaving.”

          True Louis fashion. He didn’t take no for an answer, and that was why Niall was seated on the sofa with him sometime later, empty plates with bones the only sign that Nando’s had been there and drained bottles on the end tables, the two of them with eyes settled on _It’s A Wonderful Life_.

“This movie is terrible,” Louis spoke, the first words being said since he’d cemented the fact that he wasn’t leaving.

“You’re the one who thought we needed some holiday cheer.”

          Niall grabbed the remote without hesitation and started to flip through the channels before he simply resigned to shutting the television off and tossing the remote aside.

“No. I thought _you_ needed some holiday cheer.”

“Well, I don’t, so you can take your shitty Christmas cinema and all your cheer and go have fun like everyone else is doing,” Niall huffed, standing from the sofa, picking up the plates and bottles and bringing them to the kitchen to drop them into the sink.

          Louis didn’t take no for an answer and that was why Niall shouldn’t have been surprised to find him still seated on the sofa when he returned to clean up the remainder of their mess.

“Louis.”

“You don’t have any mistletoe up.”

“What?”

“That’s a Christmas staple and you don’t have any mistletoe anywhere around here.”

“Well, I doubt it’s a staple of the season, but there’s a mistletoe ornament on the tree...” Niall said, his voice trailing off as his vision shifted to the spot on the tree where the ornament rested, right front and center. “My mum always said that people think mistletoes are for kissing, but they’re really supposed to keep evil away from you and your family. She gave me that ornament when she visited me here last year and noticed that I didn’t have any anywhere.”

          The longing resounded heavy with every sound Niall made. He missed home. He really missed home, and he wouldn’t see home for some time. Not while he was one-fifth of the world’s biggest pop band who had gig after gig lined up through the holidays that year. His homesickness showed in his eyes and the actions he made that Louis wondered if he even knew he made.

“You want to go home, don’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Louis, I can’t go home.”

“I didn’t ask if you can. I asked if you want to.”

“I,” answering came harder for Niall because his heart lied in Ireland, but he knew of the band’s plans to enjoy the day together and the last thing he wanted was for any of them to think he didn’t want to spend that time with them or let them down when it came to performing. “We have obligations to fulfill; I can’t miss out on that stuff.”

“Is that a direct quote for one of our contracts?”

“Lou, I’m just saying, it’ll be fine. I’ll be…fine.”

          Louis was quiet for a long moment as he stared at Niall from the couch, limb propped up on the sofa arm and head resting against his fist. He looked as if he still had a mouthful to say, but (in very un-Louis fashion) was saying nothing.

“What?”

“I’m waiting on you to answer my question.”

“Answer your question?”

“Do you want to go home, Niall?”

“Of course I want to go home, Louis! If you were this far from home and you were all alone, wouldn’t you want to go home?”

Louis’ eyes formed into slits and his brown brows furrowed, “Is that what you think? That you’re alone?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant-”

“Cut the pity party, Niall. You’re not by yourself.”

It was Niall’s turn to glare then and he gathered up the remainder of their mess as he said, “You can leave. Thanks for dinner.”

“You just insulted me and the other guys, and you’re getting mad at _me_? Classic Horan.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Louis, and you know I didn’t!” Niall shouted. “We’re going to perform this Christmas and your mum will be there and your sisters, and Liam’s mates will be there, and Zayn’s girlfriend and Harry will have his mum and his sister, and who’s going to be there with me? No-”

“Liam, Zayn and Harry will be there with you!” Louis stood. “I’m going to be there with you because you’re my family too and I love you.”

          The room was quiet then, and Niall could feel the guilt punching him straight in the chest with every beat of silence between them. With a sigh, Niall averted Louis’ gaze. He knew he owed him an apology, but Niall was stubborn sometimes. In fact, stubborn was an understatement.

          The eye contact he’d made was broken when Louis moved from behind the coffee table to the tree, picking the mistletoe ornament from it. Niall watched his every move almost cautiously: Louis’ fingers tracing over the colors of red made to represent holly, the green that formed leaves, Louis looking to Niall with a smile he couldn’t decipher before he walked over to where he stood and lifted his hand, raising the ornament above their heads.

“What are you doing, Louis?”

“I’m sure mistletoe do ward off evil, Niall, if you say so. But where I come from, mistletoe serves two purposes: decoration and an excuse to snog someone you’ve been wanting to snog for a while.”

          Looking to the plant that’d long been casted in hardened materials to last forever above his blond locks, Niall chewed on his lower lip then looked to Louis with a smile as he backed up. This had to be a joke.

“What are you talking about, Louis? That mistletoe stuff is bullshit. All of it, the spirits, the kissing.”

“I don’t think it’s bullshit.”

          When blue locked on blue again, Niall saw something there that let him know it wasn’t a joke.

“Louis, I…this…we…”

“…Oh.” Louis nodded, defeat evident. “I get it.”

“You don’t get it, you really don’t,” Niall murmured sardonically. “You can’t just show up here and think that bringing me food and giving this bullshit speech about mistletoe and then kissing me just to make me feel better is cool when you’re just going to leave and this will be the end of it all. That’s cruel, Louis, and it doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I wasn’t doing it just to make you feel better. I was just-” Louis sighed and put the ornament back on the tree. “I’m going to go.”

“No, Lou, say it. You were just what? It’s kind of hard to backtrack now that your motive is obvious, isn’t it?”

“I was doing it because I wanted to kiss you!”

          Silence filled the air again, and so did a thick tension that hadn’t been there before. Their eyes locked and lips were sealed, both waiting for the other to say the next word or make the next move. Louis would have been the one to break the strain between them; he always was the one who spoke up or acted first. He would have been the one to do it then, if Niall hadn’t before he could.

          Niall placed the bottles he’d held in hand aside along with the bag of cookies he’d been in the midst of cleaning up before their squabble. Reaching out to the tree, Niall grabbed the ornament and lifted it above their heads again. With his free hand, he reached out to Louis then, grabbing at black cotton as he pulled him in close.

          Louis had no time to react. No time to say anything or stop Niall, and truly, he didn’t want to. Louis had no time to even so much as take another breath before Niall’s lips were crashing upon his. Louis had no control then, not even over his own body that’d seemed to freeze at the feel of pink flesh brushing against his. The lack of movement on the other side made Niall stop, though, and he pulled back, but the loss of contact brought Louis’ muscles to life again and he tugged Niall right back.

          It was beautiful outside, and Niall brought as much Christmas cheer into the one-bedroom residence as he could, but none of that mattered in that moment. The beaming lights outside in shapes of bells, pine trees, and angels, the boxes covered in colored patterns and bows, and friends in their separate ways around the city were all irrelevant. None of it compared to lips colliding, tongues meshing, fingers gripping fabric and trailing over cheeks. None of it filled him with a warmth he’d been aching for, none of it ceased the emptiness he felt, none of it was like _home_.

Breaking their kiss, Louis looked to Niall, “I wish you could go home, Niall because I don’t like you being upset, but I’ll do my best to try and make your Christmas a blast.”

Niall shook his head with a smile as he moved his hand down, “I don’t need to go home. Not as long as you’re here.”

“I will be. You won’t be alone on Christmas, mate, I promise,” Louis said then moved in for another kiss.

“I put the mistletoe down,” Niall chuckled against his lips.

Louis snorted with a shrug of his shoulders, “I don’t care, I just needed an excuse to get you to kiss me.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [livewhilewereforeveryoung](http://livewhilewereforeveryoung.tumblr.com)


End file.
